About This Manual
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## About This Manual

This publication documents the SGI version 1.5 implementation of the Message Passing Interface (MPI) supported on SGI MIPS based systems running IRIX release 6.5 or later and as a beta release on Linux systems. MPI is a component of the SGI Message Passing Toolkit (MPT).

IRIX systems running MPI applications must also be running Array Services software version 3.1 or later. MPI consists of a library, a profiling library, and commands that support MPI. The MPT 1.5 release is a software package that supports parallel programming across a network of computer systems through a technique known as message passing.

## Related Publications and Other Sources

The Message Passing Toolkit: PVM Programmer's Manual contains additional information that might be helpful. You can obtain this document or any other SGI documentation from the SGI Technical Publications Library at http://techpubs.sgi.com.

Material about MPI is available from a variety of other sources. Some of these, particularly Web pages, include pointers to other resources. Following is a grouped list of these sources:

The MPI standard:

- As a technical report: University of Tennessee report (reference [24] from Using MPI: Portable Parallel Programming with the Message-Passing Interface, by Gropp, Lusk, and Skjellum).

- As online PostScript or hypertext on the Web:

  http://www.mpi-forum.org/

- As a journal article in the International Journal of Supercomputer Applications, volume 8, number 3/4, 1994.

- As text through the IRIS InSight library (for customers with access to this tool).

Book: Using MPI: Portable Parallel Programming with the Message-Passing Interface, by Gropp, Lusk, and Skjellum, publication TPD-0011.

Newsgroup: `comp.parallel.mpi`

## Conventions

The following conventions are used throughout this document:

Convention |  | Meaning
`command` |  | This fixed-space font denotes literal items such as commands, files, routines, path names, signals, messages, and programming language structures.
`manpage`(x) |  | Man page section identifiers appear in parentheses after man page names. The following list describes the identifiers:
1 | User commands
1B | User commands ported from BSD
2 | System calls
3 | Library routines, macros, and opdefs
4 | Devices (special files)
4P | Protocols
5 | File formats
7 | Miscellaneous topics
7D | DWB-related information
8 | Administrator commands
Some internal routines (for example, the `_assign_asgcmd_info`() routine) do not have man pages associated with them.
variable |  | Italic typeface denotes variable entries and words or concepts being defined.
`user input` |  | This bold, fixed-space font denotes literal items that the user enters in interactive sessions. Output is shown in nonbold, fixed-space font.
[ ] |  | Brackets enclose optional portions of a command or directive line.
... |  | Ellipses indicate that a preceding element can be repeated.

SGI systems include all Linux systems and all MIPS based systems that run IRIX 6.5 or later.

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